Loïc Mougeolle is a defense contractor whose ties to the military go back a generation. His father worked in nuclear deterrence for the French navy; he, in turn, worked nine years for a defense firm until co-founding his own defense company, Comand AI, in 2022, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“We will never be able to produce more than a strategic adversary like China,” said Mougeolle, who is chief executive of the Paris-based Comand AI. “What we need to do is to be able to conduct operations, 10 times, 100 times more efficiently than them. This is the starting point of Comand AI.”
Mougeolle said he’s developed an artificial intelligence-based platform that can parse orders, develop task sequences and analyze terrain, all with the aim of greatly accelerating military response times. With Comand AI, “one staff officer can do the job of four,” he said.
For now, Comand AI only focuses on the defense sector, but Mougeolle said the technology his company has developed has civil applications as well. For example, it could help fleets of delivery robots navigate terrain to reach their destinations. Or it could help deal with coordinated cyberattacks on private businesses.
Off to the space races
But entrusting new inventions that benefit everyday Europeans to innovative players like Comand AI, or European satellite and missile defense initiatives, is a gamble. While there is plenty of historical precedent, there is no certainty.
“Defense spending has been an important driver of technological advances in the U.S.,” said Chris Miller, professor at Tufts University and author of Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology. “The Defense Department often funded basic research and prototyping that was then picked up by private firms and turned into world-changing civilian technologies, such as [micro]chips, GPS, or display screens.”
